Madness in a Cadenza

[Thunderer]

The slam of the steel bars finally sealed his fate, French thought. His surname finally became meaningful, designating the ones writing what he thought were the last paragraphs of his fate. Or, rather erasing. But maybe that wasn't as bad as it seemed at first glance. To slip through the mighty besieging fleets of King Charles XI of Gallia, then to have his ship shot down from behind, to escape two cruiser missiles thanks to the very shooting down, fall on a random place on the vast surface of Planet Leeds and survive all that -- only to be caught by neither the resistance nor the invaders, but the collaborators, and be sold for simple food only to die a slow death in a POW camp due to the lack of the same -- that didn't seem as a particularly benevolent fate. Maybe it was good that it was about to end.

French wasn't very optimistic about it, but he tried to be. He tried to remember a prayer and looked up. The ceiling was very colourful. Apparently the prison was improvised from a former school. Being in school again didn't cheer him up.

He turned around. The cell, which once used to be a classroom, was filled with a motley group of people who seemed to be too occupied with their own miseries to throw him a glance. Most were sitting on chairs arranged against the walls, but those were too few, so some had to get accustomed to the floor. Having no other thing to do, French reconciled with his fate and found a spot to sit on at the centre, as there was already enough of depressed souls to fill the corners. This image made him assume that it will be no better after the classroom, only worse. That sounded very like life, and it actually made him a little relieved that his own might end soon.

But he had to ask himself what he was thinking before deciding to pull out the stunt. He must have been mad. But he was mad for Bretonia, and that was because he was madly in love with it. A death for love was one worth dying.